Here at Washington Federal Savings, we know you want to keep your financial matters private. Our goals are to serve you as effectively and conveniently as possible and to ensure that information you share with us remains confidential. That's why we've adopted the following privacy principles. We collect, retain and use information about you only in order to (1) allow us to conduct our business with you, (2) satisfy legal reporting requirements, (3) administer our internal operations, and (4) provide you with information regarding our products and services which you may find of value. If we collect information about you, we will do so only for a specific business purpose; and if you request, we will tell you why we are collecting the information. For example, we require information about your credit history and your home in order to determine whether you qualify for a home loan. We ask for your social security number when we open a new savings account because we are required to do so by the Internal Revenue Service. We ask for other personal identifying information so that we can protect your account from fraud. Maintaining accuracy of your personal information is important. We have procedures in place to help ensure that your personal information is accurate, current and complete. We also have procedures to correct inaccurate information in a timely manner, including processes to update information or remove outdated information. For example, if a customer requests a change of address, we have procedures in place to help us verify that the person requesting the change is authorized to do so. If you discover any information we have about you that is incorrect, please let us know. Washington Federal has policies and procedures in place to limit access to your personal information to those employees with a specific business reason for knowing such information. We educate our employees about the importance of confidentiality and customer privacy, and we have appropriate policies to enforce employee responsibility regarding the privacy of customer information. We maintain physical and electronic safeguards to protect your non-public personal information. Unlike many financial institutions, Washington Federal Savings does not disclose any non-public personal information about you to anyone for the purpose of marketing products or services. Examples of instances when we might share your information with others include (1) when information is provided to a reputable credit reporting agency, (2) when we hire a vendor or service company to prepare our account statements or provide support for one or more of our products or services, or (3) the information is provided to help complete a transaction initiated by you. When it is necessary to provide personally identifiable information about you to a party outside our organization, we require them by contract to safeguard your personal and confidential information. These vendors must abide by our privacy policies and applicable law. If you have questions about our privacy policy, please call us at (206) 624-7930. We will be glad to answer your questions. |